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Sunday, October 20, 2013

A new report claiming to be the most comprehensive look at global
slavery says 30 million people are living as slaves around the world.

The Global Slavery Index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, lists India as the country with by far the most slaves, with an estimated nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million) and Pakistan (2.1 million).

The top 10 countries on
its list of shame accounted for more than three quarters of the 29.8
million people living in slavery, with Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh completing the list.

In terms of countries with the highest of proportion of slaves, Mauritania in West Africa topped the table, with about 4% of its 3.4 million people enslaved, followed by Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal

The index, whose authors
claim it contains the most authoritative data on slavery conditions
worldwide, is the product of Australian mining magnate and
philanthropist Andrew Forrest's commitment to stamp out global slavery.

Forrest, ranked by Forbes
as Australia's fifth richest man, with an estimated net worth of $5.7
billion, adopted the cause after his daughter volunteered in an
orphanage in Nepal in 2008, where she encountered victims of child sex
trafficking. Forrest is a signatory to the Giving Pledge started by
billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whose members commit to donating at
least half their wealth to philanthropic causes.

The index, which draws on
10 years of research into slavery and was produced by a team of 4
authors supported by 22 other experts, is the inaugural edition of what
will be an annual report. It ranks 162 countries according to the number
of people living in slavery, the risk of enslavement and the robustness
of government responses to the problem.

Walk Free policy and
research manager Gina Dafalia told CNN the report was intended to shine a
spotlight on the issue, and quantify the extent of the problem in
different countries before anti-slavery initiatives were launched. So
far, she said, Walk Free, along with partners Humanity United and the
Legatum Foundation, had pledged a total of $100 million to stamp out the
practice.

"When we started working
in this area we realized that we didn't have a good understanding of
what exactly the situation of slavery is in the world," she said. "We
needed that information before we started doing any interventions."

The index gives a higher estimate of the global number of slaves than other reports -- a report by the International Labor Organization last year pegged the number at 20.9 million.

Dafalia said this was a
result of the Global Slavery Index using a broader definition of
slavery, which included human trafficking, forced labor, as well as
practices such as forced marriage, debt bondage and the exploitation of
children.

"Our definition of
modern slavery includes, for example, forced and servile marriage, a
concept not included in the ILO estimate, given the focus on 'forced
labor,'" she said.

The explicit definition
used in the report was "the possession and control of a person in such a
way as to significantly deprive that person of his or her individual
liberty, with the intent of exploiting that person through their use,
management, profit, transfer or disposal. Usually this exercise will be
achieved through means such as violence or threats of violence,
deception and/or coercion."

Kevin Bales, one of the report's authors and co-founder of Free the Slaves,
said that the global number of slaves was difficult to quantify. But
through methods including random sample surveys, researchers were able
to arrive at an estimate. "We were able to go to households and say 'Has
anything like this happened to anyone in your family?'" he said.

He believed the index,
which he hoped would provide "a bit of a wake-up call" to the world's
governments, had a margin of error of between 5-10%. "We always erred on
the conservative side."

Asked why 30 million
continued to live in conditions of slavery in 2013, Dafalia said the
reasons varied from country to country, but one constant was that it
remained a "hidden problem."

In some of the worst-hit
countries, the report said, the affected parties were citizens ensnared
in endemic, culturally-sanctioned forms of slavery -- "the chattel
slavery of the Haratins in Mauritania, the exploitation of children through the restavek practice in Haiti,
the cultural and economic practices of both caste and debt bondage in
India and Pakistan, and the exploitation of children through vidomegon
in Benin."

In other examples, including Nepal,
Gabon and Moldova, it was migrants who were most vulnerable to
exploitation. In many examples, noted the report, child and forced
marriage was prevalent and child protection practices weak.

It noted that in India, the country with the most slaves, the risk of enslavement varied markedly from state to state.

The Middle East and North Africa,
it said, showed the highest measured level of discrimination against
women, with one result being a high level of forced and child marriages
within the region, and widespread exploitation of trafficked women as domestic workers and prostitutes. Vulnerable male migrants also frequently found themselves in exploitative working conditions.

In contrast, said Bales,
countries like Brazil led the world in anti-slavery efforts. "It has a
national plan to eradicate slavery. It has a dirty list where it has
every company that's ever had slavery pollute their products, they have
special anti-slavery police squads."

He rejected the
suggestion that the term "slavery" was an overly emotive or misleading
way of defining people who were trapped by crushing poverty.

"I spend a lot of time
talking to people who have been or are in slavery, and when you talk to
them about it, they know what the situation is," he said.

"We're not talking about
bad choices, we're not talking about crummy jobs in a sweatshop. We're
talking about real life slavery -- you can't walk away, you're
controlled through violence, you're treated like property."

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Syrian rebels to discuss military needs as US weighs options:-The Hindu

The Syrian opposition was to meet in Istanbul with
representatives of Western and Arab countries to assess the rebels’
military needs as the US weighs its options on military support.

Louay
Mokdad of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) said on Saturday, “Military
chief General Selim Idriss will discuss with the various representatives
the needs of the rebels and give an assessment of the military
situation inside Syria.” U.S. President Barack Obama will use next
week’s G8 summit to explain his new support for arming Syrian rebels,
while lobbying Russia to help press Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to
step aside, the White House said on Friday.

The
United States on Thursday reversed its long-standing Syria policy
limiting aid to non-lethal assistance, and said it would begin sending
military support to moderates among the rebels, after accusing Damascus
of having used chemical weapons.

Syria and its ally,
Russia, reacted negatively to both the accusation of chemical weapons
use and to the plan to send military aid...........Read More......

U.S. says political solution to Syria conflict in jeopardy:- Al Arabiya

The use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces and the
involvement of Hezbollah fighters show President Bashar al-Assad's lack
of commitment to negotiations and threaten to “put a political
settlement out of reach,” the U.S. State Department said on Saturday,
citing comments by Secretary of State John Kerry.

The State Department issued a statement after Kerry spoke with Iraq's foreign minister.

“The secretary reaffirmed that the United States continues to work
aggressively for a political solution with the goal of a second Geneva
meeting, but that the use of chemical weapons and increasing involvement
of Hezbollah demonstrates the regime's lack of commitment to
negotiations and threatens to put apolitical settlement out of reach,”
the department said.......Read More......

White House: Syria crosses 'red line' with use of chemical weapons on its people:- CNN

Syria has crossed a "red line" with its use of chemical weapons,
including the nerve agent sarin gas, against rebels, a move that is
prompting the United States to increase the "scale and scope" of its
support for the opposition, the White House said Thursday.

The acknowledgment is the
first time President Barack Obama's administration has definitively
said what it has long suspected -- that President Bashar al-Assad's
forces have used chemical weapons in the ongoing civil war.

"The intelligence
community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected
chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is
likely incomplete," Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for
strategic communications, said in a statement released by the White
House..........Read More......

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Going by the Gujarat government’s figures, memorandums
of understanding (MoUs) for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) worth $876
billion were signed during its five biannual Vibrant Gujarat Global
Investors Summits from 2003 to 2011 and a whopping 84 per cent of the
projects have already been implemented or are under implementation.

This
would mean Gujarat has overtaken all of China, whose FDI inflows during
this period were to the tune of $600 billion. And, interestingly, after
the 2013 Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit, the government chose
not to give out any MoU numbers when Chief Minister Narendra Modi
declared that, “Gujarat is now the gateway to India.”

Behind
the envelope calculations show that if the State had implemented even
60 per cent of the investments promised, it would have left the dragon
behind.

But, as it were, the latest figures of FDI
inflows for the financial year 2012-13 up to January this year indicate
that Gujarat ranks sixth in the country with Rs. 2,470 crore or 2.38 per
cent share.

Maharashtra continues to top the FDI
numbers with FDI of Rs. 40,999 crore or 40 per cent, followed by Delhi,
Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

Gujarat was slightly ahead of West Bengal in 2012-13, which got FDI of Rs. 1,934 crore.

In
fact, Gujarat’s share in the FDI kitty has been heading southward
during the last three financial years from 3.38 per cent (Rs. 3,294
crore) in 2010-11, 2.85 per cent (Rs. 4,730 crore) in 2011-12 to 2.38
per cent (Rs. 2,470 crore) now. These numbers contradict the State
government’s claim that Gujarat had bucked the worldwide overall
economic downturn to become the engine of India’s growth.

Nothwithstanding
the government claims, it is an open fact that Gujarat’s FDI numbers
have always been the same or lower through the years.

Reserve
Bank of India’s FDI figures encompassing the decade of 2000 to 2011
reveal that while Gujarat received just about $7.2 billion in FDI,
Maharashtra got $45.8 billion and Delhi over $26 billion. Even Karnataka
and Tamil Nadu, with a $8.3 billion and $7.3 billion share, got a
larger piece of the national FDI pie.

Albeit the
overall FDI inflow into India fell by some 30 per cent during 2012-13,
Gujarat has beaten this, as the numbers suggest, with a bigger decline
close to 50 per cent.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

by VIJAY PRASHAD
Roaming through the al-Jazeera Arabic headquarters in Doha,
Qatar, last month, I was struck by its wall of relics. Behind glass lay
the remains of their journalists who were either killed in action or
else held in Guantanamo under false pretenses. The one tableaux that
most affected me was that of Tareq Ayyoub (1968-2003), the reporter
killed when US forces fired on the al-Jazeera station in Baghdad on
April 8, 2003 – three weeks into the Iraq War. It was a day when the
blood of journalists flowed through the streets of the city: US aircraft
struck Abu Dhabi Television’s station that day, and a US Abrams Tank
struck the Palestine Hotel, killing Taras Protsyuk (Reuters) and Jose
Couso (Telecinco).
After an internal US investigation, General Colin Powell said, “Our
forces responded to hostile fire appearing to come from a location later
identified as the Palestine Hotel.” Nothing was further from the truth.
Journalist Robert Fisk was on the ground in Baghdad. He wrote at that
time, “I was between the tank and the hotel when the shell was fired.
There was no sniper fire – nor any rocket-propelled grenade fire, as the
American officer claimed – at the time. French television footage of
the tank, running for minutes before the attack, shows the same thing.
The soundtrack – until the blinding, repulsive golden flash from the
tank barrel – is silent.” Mohamed Jassem al-Ali, al-Jazeera’s then head,
had given the US the coordinates to its Baghdad station so as to
protect it from attack; it was precisely those coordinates that were
targeted. A month later, al-Ali was fired by al-Jazeera allegedly for
hiring three “Iraqi agents” to work at the station. Pressure to silence
the buzz of criticism from al-Jazeera and to remove the images of
civilian casualties and suffering from its screens was fierce.
During the war, the US government either embedded journalists or tried
to excise them. The war could have only one story-line, particularly
given the unseemly means by which the US and the UK went into the war:
with lies and evasions told to the UN to strong-arm a compliant set of
governments into allowing the Bush-Blair team its way against an already
prone Saddam Hussein and his regime. Now, with the war gone ten years,
the challenge has been to try to remind ourselves that it happened in
the first place. The US “withdrawal” of troops in 2011 is treated as an
opportunity to withdraw the world’s attention from Iraq. We are told to
forget the criminal
conspiracy that led the North Atlantic into a war of aggression. We are
told to forget the way a country has been systematically destroyed not
only since March 19, 2003, but perhaps since the West colluded with
Saddam Hussein’s regime against Iran in 1980, flattering Hussein’s
immense ego to take his people into a murderous conflict with its
neighbor (1980-88), selling Hussein’s army chemical materials to allow
him to launch them against the restive Kurds (1983-88), and then trying
to contain his ambitions when he came asking for payment for Iraq’s
services to the West against Iran (1989-91). There is an imposed amnesia
about imperial motives and war aims, about the fact that many opposed
the war on grounds that came to pass, and about the sheer suffering
about the war.
What have we forgotten?
* The total number of dead – a figure impossible to fathom, somewhere
near a million or maybe higher (the Lancet’s figure from 2006 if updated
would lead us higher yet).
* The total number of refugees – around seven million according to the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Many fled to Syria, where the
two-year bloody war has now left these Iraqis in a position of great
peril.
* The destruction of infrastructure – now reconstructed on lines that favor the sectarian impulses of the new political class.
* The war crimes – Abu Ghraib, Falluja, the very rush to war itself.
Obama, who had staked out his own position on the impending Iraq War
clear in 2002 (“a dumb war, a rash war”), could not revisit them in
2011: he was now the Commander in Chief and would find it awkward to
belittle the sacrifices of troops who were sent to fight a false war. At
most Obama could acknowledge the debate before the war, with the
lead-up “a source of great controversy here at home, with patriots on
both sides of the debate.” The Iraq war was not perfect, he accepted,
but its outcome was good, with the troops leaving behind “a sovereign,
stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was
elected by its people.” American liberalism is not capable of any more
than that. It is why American liberalism will not be willing to register
its complicity in such a grotesque imperialist project, nor be willing
to break with that project in the first place. Too much is to be gained
through its silence.
To go beyond Obama’s anodyne comments from last year is to accept that
Iraq was not a “dumb war” but the outcome of a system premised on
militarism and one that is capable of the harshest violence against its
enemies. During the week of the US withdrawal from Iraq, a reporter for
The New York Times found 400 pages of US military investigations on the
2005 massacres at Haditha, where US marines killed 24 Iraqis (including a
76-year-old man in a wheelchair, children and toddlers). Most of the US
troops had been acquitted by their justice system, leaving a bad taste
in the Iraqi body politic. As Michael Schmidt put it in The Times, “That
sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American
forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them stay
without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White
House could not accept.”
It was the aftermath of Haditha that forced the Iraqi government to no
longer give a carte blanche to US troops. The Iraqi Parliament, in a
sense, ejected the US because Washington would not allow its troops to
come under Iraqi jurisdiction. That is how the Iraq War finally ended –
not with a withdrawal but with an ejection.
I write this essay in New Delhi, remembering the day ten years ago when
Shock and Awe began and remembering the months that led to the war. I
remember two friends and teachers who departed over this decade, and
write these words with their memory in mind – Edward Said (1935-2003)
and Alexander Cockburn (1941-2012). Till the very end, Said, who died
ten years ago, held fast against the imperialist project. Not long
before he died, Said told al-Ahram that he felt that the imperialist
states wanted to “terminate some countries” and “install regimes
friendly to the United States,” a “dream that has very little basis in
reality. The knowledge they have of the Middle East, to judge from the
people who advise them, is to say the least out of date and widely
speculative.” There were no flowers and sweets thrown to US troops as
Fouad Ajami and Kanan Makiya assumed; more likely the troops were fired
upon or found themselves victims to roadside bombs. I saw Edward speak
bravely in late 1990 against Gulf War 1 in Chicago, when the tide was
decidedly in favor of that bombardment and only a handful of people saw
the ruse for what it was.
One of those other people was Alexander Cockburn. During 2002-03, I had
several wonderful interactions with Alexander as he edited the essays I
wrote for CounterPunch on the lead-up to the war. There was no fine line
to be walked – the war was being based on false pretenses. We already
knew that, and Alexander encouraged as much honest writing as possible
against imperial mendacity on Iraq. I remember once asking him how he
kept his nerve. His ancestor had burned down the White House, he told
me. Nothing his pen can do matches that. High standards set by his past,
not only for him but also for journalists with the memory of Tareq,
Taras and Jose in mind.
Vijay Prashad’s new book, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, is out this month from Verso Books.
Ganashakti

Dangerous for democracy

The ‘counter-affidavit’ submitted by the Union government to the Supreme
Court in the Ashok Chavan case is a scandal. Simply put, it argues that
the Election Commission of India has no power to disqualify a candidate
on the basis of his or her poll expenditure accounts, even if those
have been falsified. It holds that the ECI’s power to disqualify a
candidate “arises only in the event of failure to lodge an account of
expenses and not for any other reason…” The government is, in the
process, calling for a radical and dangerous change in the way polls are
conducted in India. If there is one issue on which there is a consensus
in the country, it is on the damage inflicted on free and fair
elections by the unbridled rise of money power. Now the government
argues that the “correctness or otherwise” of the accounts is no concern
of the body that conducts and regulates elections. The United
Progressive Alliance government is behaving with the ECI the way it has
with the Comptroller & Auditor General. It is trying to bat its way
out of ugly scams and scandals by seeking to curb the independence of
these constitutional bodies. This is dangerous for accountability and
for democracy, given the signal role assigned to the Election Commission
in our political system.

The fact that this affidavit has been filed in the Ashok Chavan case —
notoriously known as the ‘paid news’ case — makes things worse. Mr.
Chavan was facing a rough time in the Election Commission’s inquiry into
his poll expenses in the 2009 election campaign — especially the money
he allegedly spent for ‘paid news’ in his favour in several newspapers.
He has challenged the jurisdiction of the ECI on this matter in the
Supreme Court. Though the Supreme Court is still seized of the matter
and has made no ruling in the matter yet, the Centre’s affidavit raises
troubling questions about the government’s motives. Why is it
challenging the jurisdiction of the Election Commission over elections?
Why is it taking such a blatantly unscrupulous stand, and to help whom?
Yet, the damage this would do goes far beyond even the pernicious realm
of paid news. If the government has its way, it would mean there is no
institution or body that is empowered to regulate poll expenditures in
the country. It would also mean the serious erosion of the powers of
constitutional bodies like the ECI and the CAG that have performed their
duties with diligence and integrity. Over a decade ago, a full bench of
the Supreme Court held that the Election Commission had the power to
disqualify a candidate whose accounts were not filed in a true and
correct manner. That is the way to go. The government should withdraw
its ill-advised affidavit at once and not stand in the way of the ECI
doing what it is constitutionally mandated to do.

Monday, March 18, 2013

In his new book, Power Systems, Noam Chomsky raises the question: why
has the present economic crisis not evoked the sort of massive protest
from the working class in the United States of America that the Great
Depression of the 1930s did?
True, the scale of unemployment today is not as large as it had been
during the 1930s. Nonetheless it is substantial; and the crisis has
already lasted five years with no end in sight. And yet, America remains
a ‘desert’ in terms of any militant working-class mobilization against
it.
The proximate answer he provides for this difference is the collapse of
militant trade unionism in today’s US; but underlying this, according to
him, is the collapse of the US Communist Party, which had played a
major role in mobilizing the workers during the Depression. Since
Chomsky, as an anarchist, is not known to be particularly well-disposed
towards communist parties, his lauding the role of the US Communist
Party during the 1930s, cannot be dismissed as a paean from the
faithful.
Elsewhere too the communists had played a crucial role in mobilizing the
workers during the Great Depression. In Germany, for instance, the
party’s support among the young and unemployed workers had soared before
Hitler’s coming to power. Large-scale unemployment provides the soil
not only for the growth of fascist tendencies that pit one segment of
the people against another (“outsiders are stealing your jobs”), or that
invoke a mythical conspiracy by an almost non- existent minority as the
cause of the people’s woes (half a million Jews in the 1930s are
responsible for the woes of 70 million Germans), it also nourishes the
growth of a militant Left that mobilizes workers’ resistance.
The question then arises: why has the Left not emerged as a powerful
force mobilizing the people in the current crisis? Of course, the growth
of Syriza in Greece, of Beppe Grillo’s “Five Star” movement in Italy
(and possibly of Yair Lapid’s movement in Israel), can be seen as part
of people’s resistance in the context of the crisis. But these movements
are not just amorphous (which is not surprising); they lack, as yet,
any clear-cut socio-economic programme.
Their being ‘reformist’ is immaterial, for any significant mobilization
of the people must necessarily begin with a ‘reform’ agenda; what they
lack, however, is a clear programme of ‘reform’ with a thought-out
strategy of coping with the implications of putting such ‘reform’ into
practice. Their rise is more an expression of anger among the people
than a reposing of people’s trust in an alternative economic trajectory.
And the traditional communist Left continues to languish even in the
midst of the crisis, which needs an explanation.
To say that the quietude of communist formations is because of the
collapse of the Soviet Union is not enough: many communist formations in
the advanced capitalist world had broken with the Soviet Union long
before its collapse; they surely should not have been shell-shocked by
it. Likewise, to say that such formations are too small to matter at
present unlike in the 1930s when communism represented a nascent,
vigorous tendency, is not enough. The US Communist Party, like its
German counterpart, grew because of leading people’s resistance; why is
today different?
There is, in my view, a deeper reason behind it. Communism developed as
an internationalist movement at a time when capitalist countries were
engaged in a world war that apotheosized national chauvinism. Lenin’s
slogan of converting the imperialist war into a civil war, so that
workers of the belligerent countries did not have to kill each other
across trenches in the interests of finance capital, or Rosa Luxemburg’s
slogan of a European workers’ movement for peace, raised the banner of
internationalism against the national chauvinism promoted by capitalism.
The finance capital against which they sought to mobilize workers was
national finance capital, British, German, or French. The ideology of
this finance capital, as analysed by Rudolf Hilferding in his opus, Das
Finanzkapital, or as expressed in Erich Maria Remarque’s classic work,
All Quiet on the Western Front, was the glorification of the ‘National
Idea’. Socialist internationalism stood against capitalist
national-chauvinism, and mobilizing the people in each country against
the hegemony of such national capital created no theoretical problems
for the communists.
What contemporary globalization has entailed, however, is globalization
of finance, and hence the formation of an international finance capital,
which champions, not national-chauvinism, but its own brand of
internationalism. And mobilizing the people of any particular country
for an alternative agenda in the context of the crisis, which means a
struggle against the hegemony of such international finance capital,
necessarily means a retreat into nationalism, a de-linking of the
nation, presided over by a particular nation-State which the Left hopes
to capture, from the internationalism essayed by contemporary finance
capital. This puts the Left in a dilemma.
Matters would be different if international mobilizations of workers
could be carried out against the impact of the crisis; but this remains a
far cry, even in the European Union, which, in spite of being a
supra-national entity, has witnessed no significant supra-national
workers’ organizations or even movements. Communists of all kinds, and
the Left in general, have thus appeared curiously devoid of any serious
alternative agenda, since any such agenda, if voted to power, would
necessarily risk a retreat from the internationalism promoted by
finance, howsoever inadequate, into a nationalism that the Left in
advanced countries has traditionally found distasteful.
For many in the European Left for instance, the EU with all its flaws
represents an advance in a continent that had been torn apart by two
world wars. The fact that the EU is dominated by finance capital whose
cause is championed by Germany and which has brought crisis and
unemployment to the workers, is not sufficient reason for them to
abandon the European project. Unwilling to retreat, in spite of the
crisis, from even the inadequate internationalism brought about by
finance capital, and unable to put into practice any alternative
internationalist project, the Left appears paralysed for the moment. It
is the fascists, who have always revelled in national-chauvinism, with
no such inhibitions about de-linking from a supra-national project, who
appear better-placed to profit from the people’s anger at the
predicament to which they have been reduced by the crisis.
In the third world, where nationalism has been associated with
anti-imperialist struggles and hence has had an inclusive character
(against which the effort has been to pit other narrow, sectional
“nationalisms” like “Hindu nationalism”), the Left has had no such
dilemma in opposing the ‘globalization’ brought about under the aegis of
finance capital. But in many third-world countries the crisis has had
only a muted impact till now. The fact that globalization of capital has
led to some diffusion of activities from high-wage advanced countries
to low-wage third-world countries, and in the process caused high growth
rates of gross domestic product in some of the latter, has created the
illusion, even within Left circles, that these countries will be able to
avoid the crisis.
Of course, even their high GDP growth has been accompanied by rampant
dispossession of peasants and petty producers, without any corresponding
increase in organized sector employment; and, hence, by a swelling of
the relative size of the labour reserves, and of the magnitude of
absolute poverty. But this is something which many, including within the
Left, are either oblivious of, or do not take seriously enough on the
grounds that a development of the ‘productive forces’ is always to be
welcomed. Additionally, they also believe that this phenomenon of high
growth will continue in spite of the crisis, that any interruption in it
is only temporary.
We are thus in a peculiar situation where both in the first and in the
third world, the Left is paralysed in spite of the persistence of the
crisis, unlike in the 1930s when the crisis had provided the setting for
a massive worldwide growth of the Left.
This stasis, however, is likely to break soon, at least in the third
world which is now being hit by the crisis to an extent far greater than
before. Indeed China, the biggest gainer from the diffusion of
activities from the advanced capitalist world, has experienced such
social unrest that it has already started moving towards an alternative
growth trajectory with far greater emphasis on the home market. This
would require substantial measures of income redistribution towards the
working people, especially in rural areas. Similar measures will become
necessary in other third-world countries too, as they begin to
experience the crisis in all its severity. And it is the Left alone that
can lead the struggle for such a change of course.
Ganashakti

The suspended proposal to give the language a decisive place in the
civil services examination will exclude large numbers of aspiring
candidates

After a nationwide outcry, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)
has suspended its proposal to make English a predominant component of
the Civil Services Mains examination from this year. The UPSC must scrap
the proposals altogether. This is why:

Page 11 of the notification says: “Candidates will have the option to
answer all the question papers, except Section 2 of the Paper-I (English
comprehension and English precis) in English or Hindi. If the candidate
has had his/her graduation in any of the following language mediums
using the particular language medium for qualifying the graduate level
examination, then he/she may opt for that particular language medium to
answer all the question papers, except Section 2 of the Paper-I (English
comprehension and English precis). [Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri,
Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri,
Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil,
Telugu, and Urdu.]”

Retrograde

This indicates that if an aspirant’s mother tongue is, say, Gujarati,
but his language medium while studying for the first degree and writing
his graduate examinations, was not Gujarati, he will not be allowed to
write the exam in Gujarati. Many students study in regional languages
till Class 12. Though they shift to English medium for their college
education, their level of proficiency in English cannot be compared with
those studying in “convents” and cities. When Hindi is allowed as a
language medium for the UPSC mains examination unconditionally, why not
other languages like Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati? This step is a negation to
the “idea of India” that the founding fathers of the Constitution
envisaged.

To elaborate further, in Gujarat, my cadre, 90 per cent of the
candidates clearing the exam qualify with a language as an optional
subject, and write the exam in Gujarati.

This is true for many other States of India. Any move to change this
will be a retrograde step that will disrupt, destroy and dismantle the
dreams of many of my fellow Indians.

My brother officer, Mohammed Ali Shihab of the Nagaland cadre, an orphan
who worked as peon, pump operator and later as a teacher, made it into
the civil services examination with Malayalam as an optional subject and
with Malayalam as the language medium. Under the new rules, this man of
humble origins from Kerala would never have become a civil servant
unless he knew English (in which he was not proficient), because his
college education was not in Malayalam.

Page 13 of the notification mentions that in Paper 1 of the mains
examination: “Essay: Candidates will be required to write an essay on a
specific topic. The choice of subjects will be given. They will be
expected to keep closely to the subject of the essay to arrange their
ideas in orderly fashion, and to write concisely. Credit will be given
for effective and exact expression (200 marks). English Comprehension
& English Precis will be to test the English language Comprehension
and English precis writing skills (at 10th standard level) (100 marks).”

Paper 1 consists of 300 marks, and the marks obtained in this paper will
be taken into consideration while deciding the overall ranking in the
examination. This provision is anti-rural and anti-poor. As 100 marks of
English comprehension and English precis can create many a disparity in
the merit ranking, this is another retrograde step. In the preliminary
examination, the screening process for the Mains, the aspirant is tested
for English language skills. So, it is understood that a candidate
appearing for the Mains has already proved his English language
abilities in the preliminary examination. While the marks in preliminary
examination do not affect the overall ranking of the candidate, the
mains marks will. This will place many a rural and vernacular language
aspirant at a disadvantage.

During the training of IAS officers at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National
Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, 40 per cent of the time spent in
Phase-I of the programme is for the language of the State where the
officer will serve. The excessive focus on English will only hamper the
aspirations of rural India, and is a step that will widen the divide
between India and Bharat.

Page 11 of the notification says that: “However, in the interest of
maintaining the quality and standards of examination, a minimum number
of 25 (twenty-five) candidates should opt for a specific language medium
for answering the question papers in that language medium. In case
there are less than 25 (twenty-five) candidates opting for any approved
language medium (other than English or Hindi), then those candidates
will be required to write their examination either in Hindi or in
English only.”

This provision will seriously limit the aspirations of many in the
country. If there is only one aspirant who wants to write, say in
Santhali, why is his freedom of expression guaranteed by the
Constitution being curtailed?

Optional subject

Page 16 of notification says: “Optional Subject Papers I & II:
Candidates may choose any optional subject from amongst the list of
subjects given in para 2 (Group 1). However, if a candidate has
graduated in any of the literatures of languages indicated in Group-2 ,
with the literature as the main subject, then the candidate can also opt
for that particular literature subject as an optional subject.”

This provision implies that literature cannot be chosen as an optional
if the candidate hasn’t graduated in it. This means a medical science
graduate cannot opt for Telugu or political science graduate cannot opt
for Gujarati. This restrictive provision on the rights of the candidates
to choose his optional paper serves no purpose and suggests a lack of
application of mind and logic.

Page 10 of the notification says: “NOTE: (i) Marks obtained by the
candidates for all papers (Paper I-VII) will be counted for merit
ranking. However, the Commission will have the discretion to fix
qualifying marks in any or all papers of the examination.”

This provision is again ambiguous. In the CAT examination, each section
has a cut-off. This is already notified by the examination conducting
agency. But the UPSC only says it has the discretion to fix qualifying
marks in any or all papers of the examination.

Aside from all this, I may point out that the examination cycle is a one
year process. There are candidates who prepare over years for this
examination. Introduction of a new pattern without giving them
reasonable time to adjust to the changes is in violation of the
principles of natural justice. The proposed changes will only increase
the role of coaching centres. Candidates who have been already coached
will now be further coached to face the new subjects, shelling out vast
amounts for this.

The proposed changes are in violation of the Right to Equality (Article 14) and Right to Expression (Article 19).

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Even as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) frets over the
high rate of inflation and wards off pressures to cut interest rates, it
is faced with another challenge. Balance of payments data for the
second quarter of 2012-13 show that the current account deficit
continues to rise, and has touched a record 5.4 per cent of GDP. Both of
these developments that would be considered signs of “overheating”
occur at a time when growth is slowing.

However, the
high current account deficit to GDP ratio is not merely because the
denominator – GDP -- is lower than expected because of slower growth. It
also reflects certain structural problems characterising the
numerator-the current account deficit-which prevent its contraction when
the economy grows more slowly.

Consider figures for
the first half of this financial year relative to the corresponding
period of the previous year. As Chart 1 shows, the current account
deficit is higher this year when compared to the previous one partly
because the trade deficit has risen from $59.1 billion to $61.1 billion
despite slowing growth. This has meant that despite absolutely large net
capital inflows into the country, of as much as $40 billion over the
first six months of this fiscal, India is just able to finance its
current account deficit. The period when a large share of capital
inflows went to buttress India’s foreign exchange reserves seems to be
over. In fact, if inflows shrink or the deficit widens, the rupee would
be under much pressure.

This raises the question as
to why the trade deficit remains high. One reason, emphasised by the
government, is that exports, especially to Europe, have been adversely
affected by the global recession. As Chart 2 indicates, goods exports
over the first six months of this fiscal year have fallen with respect
to the last and the increase in services exports has been inadequate to
neutralise that fall. But this is not the only problem. While India’s
exports are sensitive to global income declines, India’s imports have
been less responsive to the slow down in income growth. It is well known
that two items of imports have played an important role in keeping
India’s import bill high-oil and gold. In the case of both these
commodities, prices have declined in international markets during the
period in question. However, in the case of oil the quantum of imports
has increased to push up the import bill. And in the case of gold,
though the decrease in the import bill is a noticeable 13.7 per cent,
high growth rates and levels in the past have ensured that the outgo on
this account has remained high.

In sum, the import
bills on account of both oil and gold do not seem to fall much despite
rising prices and slowing GDP growth. A feature of both these
commodities, especially gold, is that it is the rich that largely
account for the growth in their demand. Over the year ended September
2011, demand for gold in India was 1059 tonnes, as compared with 214
tonnes in the US and 770 tonnes in China, whereas per capita income in
the three countries stood at $1,410, $48,620, and $4,940 respectively.
The “average” Indian could not be responsible for such “excess demand”
for gold. It is the rich who are clearly responsible. The incomes of the
rich are not affected as much by the slow down. And, the demands of the
rich are relatively inelastic or non-responsive with respect to price
changes. This structural feature influencing India’s import bill is what
accounts for the asymmetry in the response of exports and imports to
world and domestic incomes respectively. What is needed is an effort at
curbing such elite consumption. While this may be difficult to implement
through physical controls in the case of oil, it can easily be done in
the case of gold.

With the government failing to do
so, the balance in the trade in goods and services has turned
increasingly negative. But that is not all. Corporate India, which has
been borrowing heavily from international markets to exploit the lower
interest rates prevailing there, has also begun tapping the nation’s
foreign exchange earnings to meet its foreign debt service commitments.
As the RBI’s Bulletin for March 2013 notes: “Net outﬂow on account of
primary income not only continued in Q2 of 2012-13 but also showed an
uptrend mainly on account of higher interest payments under external
commercial borrowings (ECBs) and FII investments in debt securities.” In
the event, despite increase remittance receipts from Indian workers
abroad (Chart 3), there has been a decline in net receipts from income
payments.

The consequence of all of this is a
worsening of the current account deficit, which the RBI sees as having
entered the danger zone. Addressing this requires reining in the import
bill, which in turn requires curbing elite consumption. India’s rich are
the real problem.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Manik Sarkar, Tripura Chief Minister, does not own a house or a car. His
bank balance is Rs. 10,000. As Chief Minister, he is expected to carry a
mobile phone but he refuses to do so saying the cell will give him a
“lavish flavour.”

At a personal level, Manik Sarkar may be a throwback to another era — of
scrupulousness and honesty in public life. But that quality is not
entirely novel in Tripura where one of his predecessors, Nripen
Chakraborty, was well known for his probity.

Coming from a Congress family, this CPI(M) stalwart recalls attending a
public meeting by Jawaharlal Nehru. But in his student days, Mr. Sarkar
was more impressed by communism than by the Congress brand of socialism.

A member of the party’s politburo, Manik Sarkar has led the Left Dront
to three successive election wins — from 1998. His biggest achievement
may well be curbing the State’s extremist problem that used to cripple
its economy and development. He has personally visited all corners of
the State to oversee development activities and taken note of problems
faced by the local population.

The captain of the CPI(M) team has made no changes to his daily routine
despite the vigorous campaign. Every morning he does some physical
exercise, washes his clothes and does other household work.

Before this assembly election the CPI(M) invited many prominent leaders
to campaign for left nominees, but he was in the driving seat of the
campaign. He did so despite being a contestant from Dhanpur constituency
from where he won three times in a row.

In an interview, an optimistic Manik Sarkar believes it’s only a matter
of time before the Left Dront records another “massive victory” in
Tripura.

In its manifesto, the Congress has promised jobs, allowance to
unemployed youths, implementation of pay commission recommendations and
free ration to the poorest section of people. What do you think?

All Congress governments since 1952 have been voicing a sea of
assurances, but hardly anything has been implemented. The nation is now
burdened with 20 crore unemployed youths. People understand the reality
and will not fall prey to false promises.

More than 40 per cent of electors vote for Congress despite the fact
that CPI(M) has swept several elections in Tripura. Do you think that is
a failure on part of your party organisation?

I don’t think there was any failure on our part. Some people could be
dissatisfied with us. We cannot do much. I have no power, everything
lies with Delhi.

CPI(M) has made the extremist problem an issue this election.

Even Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh branded terrorism as a serious
threat to nation. Here his party has tied up with INPT, which is a mask
of extremists, for the sake of vote. Congress always shakes hand with
subversive groups. But people will reject this tactical alliance and
bring back Left Front in power.

There is a sense of resentment among government employees over their pay structure. What is your take?

We have made things better for the employees. By and large they are happy though some are confused.

Trinamool Congress has abstained from contesting in Tripura. How do you see that?

This could be a tactical decision by the party. Its leaders knew that if
their party contests all its candidates would lose deposit.

How is it that you have been Chief Minister for three terms?

I don’t see anything as personal. We have done everything collectively,
so credit goes to all. We were successful in restoring peace in the
state with enormous support from people at large. We have achieved
integration of people from all sections. Hindu, Muslim, Christian and
Buddhists are all living like brothers. This is something unique in
light of the situation in the country.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Union budget provides an occasion for the UPA government to end
its cosy ties with business houses and recognise the political economy
of pain and deprivation

In his memoirs of his years as Finance Minister, Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer,
Yashwant Sinha writes, somewhat regretfully, that “economics in India
has always been dominated by politics. My experience as Finance Minister
proves this point beyond any doubt.” After detailing many attempts from
within and outside the sangh parivar at contesting and suborning his
presumably good policies and equally good intentions, Mr. Sinha sums up a
Finance Minister’s conundrum: “Elections were important and winning
them was also important. But we had to remember our responsibility was
not only to the present but also to the future. Good economic policies
could not, and should not, be sacrificed at the altar of political gain
for the present.”

It remains to be seen whether Finance Minister P. Chidambaram will be
able to avoid the “populism of the present.” After all, this will be the
last serious budget before the political system drifts inexorably
towards partisan battles of the next general election. Hence, the last
chance to rectify not just a difficult economic situation but also to
rescue it from political opportunism, and to salvage the idea and
principles of economic reform from a soggy moral calculus.

In the process, Mr. Chidambaram also gets another shot at restoring the
United Progressive Alliance dispensation’s reputation as competent
manager of the national economy. On a personal note, he can be expected
to want to use the budget to reverse the damage the economy suffered
under Pranab Mukherjee these last three years.

Three obligations

However, a budget is not just an exercise in balancing books; it is the
finest instrument for showcasing a regime’s political philosophy and
notions of public morality behind its economic priorities. The power to
impose taxes — and the expectation that citizens should joyfully submit
to this demand — carries with it the ultimate democratic responsibility.
When on February 28, he stands up to present his budget, Mr.
Chidambaram will have to be mindful of at least three specific
obligations that any Finance Minister needs to always keep in mind.

First, the budget cannot be an exercise in favouring and rewarding (or
punishing) this or that business house. Easier said than done. Mr.
Chidambaram is known to have friends in the corporate crowd. Perhaps it
would be unfair to suggest that the Finance Minister would allow his
friendships to cloud his judgment; nonetheless, it will not hurt if he
were to be reminded of The Economist’s sound advice to
policymakers: “promote capitalism, not capitalists.” This decade-old
mantra remains valid and Finance Ministry mandarins will need to
demonstrate that they are capable of making a distinction between the
shabby interests of this or that capitalist and the healthy requirements
of a complex and lawful economy.

There are good political reasons to heed this sage advice. The Finance
Minister knows — as do his colleagues in the Congress party and the
government — that much of the UPA’s political difficulties have arisen
on account of bad blood among the business houses. The genesis of the 2G
controversy can be traced to greed and rivalry among corporate honchos.
This un-moderated rancour within the corporate world soon sought — and
found — passionate partisans and motivated advocates in ‘civil society.’

A mock anti-corruption “movement” was unleashed to distract attention
away from the excesses and illegalities of the corporate world. If Mr.
Chidambaram still chooses to play favourites among the corporate houses,
there will be a heavier political price to be paid by his party.

Business rivalries have already produced a different kind of
disequilibrium. Corporate disputes have allowed the Supreme Court —
rather some judges — to impose their own ideas and principles on the
political executive. Judicial interventions and pronouncements are then
worked upon to crank up anger and partisanship against selected
political rivals.

Nonetheless, it must be presumed that the Congress has not totally shut
down its political antennae. Its leadership knows that many of these
captains of industry have an interventionist political agenda. It is no
secret that a sizeable section of the Mumbai club is keen to rearrange
the ruling arrangements in New Delhi around, say, a Sharad Pawar or a
Narendra Modi after the next Lok Sabha elections. There is no earthly
reason why the budget should seek to mollify these very greedy and
politically ambitious business houses that have proved so intractable
these last few years. Rather, the corporate bluff must be called.

Promoter of social good

Secondly, the budget should reveal a government that is not just wedded
to the idea of wholesome public interest but is also cognisant of its
obligations to be the ultimate promoter and protector of the social
good. This basic democratic obligation has somehow been lost sight of in
recent years. The budget provides yet another opportunity to the UPA
government to satisfy the citizens that it is not in thrall of crony
capitalism. It is not a mere platitude. This is an imperative, all the
more because there are at least half a dozen senior Cabinet Ministers
who are known for their proximity to this or that industrial house, and
who at times find it difficult to resolve the conflict between their
oath of office and their unhealthy ties with these super-affluent
gentlemen. It is this soft corner for a tainted corporate crowd that has
fed the perception of collusion and contributed to the alienation of
the middle classes. The middle class quest for lawful governance cannot
be satisfied without bringing the so-called economic entrepreneurs
within the ambit of the law.

Thirdly, Mr. Chidambaram has an obligation to use the budget to signal
that the democratic system has the will and the stamina to roll back the
corporate offensive in running this country’s national priorities and
its collective affairs. No doubt, recovery of the Indian Growth Story is
a national imperative; no doubt, the global economic slowdown has
complicated this recovery; and, no doubt, “animal spirits” need to be
unleashed. Yet, it should be unacceptable to liberal and sensitive
voices that the national narrative has simply been hijacked by the
presumed need to appease market sentiment, that too at the expense of
democratic values. As a centrist party, the Congress in particular has
to be always cognisant of the larger political economy of pain and
deprivation. A democratic government cannot act as if it has no option
but to behave like a hostage to the manipulators of the market
sentiment.

Striking an equilibrium

Above all, the state-market equilibrium needs to be reworked in morally
defensible terms. Even within the framework of a liberal economy, it is
the obligation of the public authority to ensure that the relationship
between the corporate and the citizen is a balanced, fair and two-way
affair.

It is the task of democratic governance to see to it that the citizen as
a consumer gets a sense of fairness, and is not being helplessly taken
for a ride by large corporate organisations every time he or she makes a
commercial transaction. Many business leaders in India think they have
arrived, and that they neither need nor care for the “political crowd”
and its democratic obligations. In particular, the business leaders are
prone to believe that they are entitled to chafe at any suggestion of
lawful restraint on their greed and profits. On the contrary, there is
more than a hint of a threat: if elements of the policy regime are not
arranged to the satisfaction of corporate interests, “they” will take
their investments out of India to friendlier markets. This attitude has
already produced unhappy economic and political aberrations.

The larger democratic arrangement has lost its moral lustre and the
political and constitutional system has incurred a debilitating
legitimacy deficit partly because there remains a perception of
collusion between the public authority and the corporate practitioners
of unethical practices. Recovery of the lost moral sufficiency of the
economy can no longer be postponed.

(Harish Khare is a veteran commentator and political analyst, and former media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh)

Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, the last premier of deposed Libyan leader Muamer
Qaddafi, is in critical condition after being tortured in a Libyan
prison, his Tunisian lawyer said on Wednesday.

Mahmudi "is in critical condition as a result of the torture he has
suffered," said Mabrouk Kourchid, adding that "he could die".

The lawyer did not provide any further details nor reveal his sources for fear they could suffer reprisals.

Mahmudi fled to neighbouring Tunisia in September 2011, shortly after
rebels seized Tripoli and effectively put an end to more than four
decades of Kadhafi's iron-fisted rule.

He was arrested there and extradited to Libya last June, despite
warnings from rights groups that he could face the death penalty.

He went on trial in November for what the prosecutor general's spokesman
said were "prejudicial acts against the security of the state and
financial crimes."

In July, Mahmudi protested his innocence to journalists visiting his prison.

"I am not guilty, not guilty, not guilty," he told reporters during a
visit organised by the authorities in an apparent bid to quash rumours
he had been tortured.

A physician by training, Mahmudi was loyal to Qaddafi until the end,
serving as premier from 2006 up to the final days of his regime.

Along with Seif al-Islam, the toppled dictator's most high-profile son
who is also on trial, Mahmudi is one of the few remaining keepers of the
many state secrets under Qaddafi, who was captured and killed by rebels
in October 2011.
AFP

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The article by V.K. Shunglu in The Hindu, “The risk business needs better cover”
(Op-Ed, February 14, 2013) is one-sided and conspicuously understates
certain key aspects of insurance reforms undertaken in the country a
decade ago. It misses the basic premise on which an insurance business
is run — that of “trust” and the long-term “promises to be upheld.”

This industry should not be seen merely in economic terms. The
settlement of the death claim of Hemant Karkare, chief of the Mumbai
Anti-Terrorist Squad, who was killed in Mumbai’s 26/11, presents a
clear-cut example of Trust.

Mumbai’s Dadar branch of the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) had
settled the death claim amount of Rs.25 lakh within five days whereas a
private company (name withheld), where Karkare had coverage for a
similar amount, had rejected the claim — and, after a lapse of six
months — by stating that the deceased had wilfully risked his life, even
after knowing that his life was in danger. That’s why I said the
insurance business should not be seen in purely economic terms.

The tag of public sector should not be the reason for spewing venom.
There are certain “Crown jewels such as LIC”; it settles 98.6 per cent
of claims, the only insurance company in the world to do so. It is true,
as Mr. Shunglu says, that the insurance business has become a key
player in underpinning the long-term foundations of India’s capital
markets and financial system. But for satiating the needs of India’s
capital markets, these private insurance companies have done little good
for gullible policyholders and their hard-earned monies.

This is an industry in which even with a small amount of investment i.e.
Rs.100 crore, thousands and lakhs of crores of public money can be
garnered. It is firmly believed that the Foreign direct investment (FDI)
hike will allow foreign capital with small investments to gain greater
access and control over large domestic savings. The annual report
(2011-2012) of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA)
points out that FDI brought in by private life insurance companies up
to March 31, 2012, was a meagre Rs.6,324.27 crore, which was to meet
share capital requirements prescribed by the regulator. Not a single pie
was invested in the infrastructure sector. It is LIC which is a
saviour, and the government of the day is utilising it as a captive
investor, just as it has done in the case of petroleum major ONGC.

In our country, insurance companies are mopping up people’s savings.
During 2011-12, domestic savings were 32 per cent of GDP. Financial
experts say that domestic savings, and not FDI, are crucial for any
country’s economic development. In India, LIC has provided Rs.7,04,151
crore to the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2012) while the four general
insurance companies and GIC of India have contributed about Rs. one lakh
crore. Where will the government get these huge investments from if it
tries to weaken the public sector insurance companies?

The World Economic Forum Financial Development Report 2012 tells the
success story of LIC. It shows that given the low level of income and
low disposable income of most Indians, insurance penetration in India is
much greater than in countries with a per capita income that is 10
times higher. It is remarkable that with a per capita GDP of $1,388.80,
India has achieved a life insurance penetration of 3.61 per cent as
against 3.56 per cent of the United States with a per capita GDP of
$4,8386.77. It is also a matter of pride that the report places India at
the top of global rankings in terms of Life Insurance Density (measured
as a ratio of direct premium to per capita GDP of 2011).

The LIC, the four general insurance companies in the public sector and
GIC of India are doing an excellent job despite competition from private
insurance companies. In 2011-12, LIC earned a premium of Rs.81,514.49
crore registering a market share of 71.36 per cent in premium income. It
sold 3.57 crore new policies, to take an 80.9 per cent market share in
the number of policies. Similarly, the four insurance companies have
earned a premium income of Rs.30,532 crore and registered 58 per cent of
market share.

The financial crisis in the U.S. and Europe has seriously eroded
confidence in the banking and insurance sectors. At the same time, our
domestic private insurance partners hardly need capital to be infused by
their foreign counterparts, as put forth by the votaries of FDI
increase.

Partners of private insurance companies in India like the Tatas and
Reliance are on an acquisition spree, spending billions of dollars, both
on the domestic and foreign fronts during the last five years. The
others, like the State Bank of India and other public sector banks have
capital reserves of their own. Some foreign partners have exited not due
to a delay in the increase of FDI cap but because they are in search of
greener pastures.

The author has also put forth another interesting argument — that
shareholders and company boards be left free to determine whether
additional investment should be through FDI or FII or by other means.

The world saw the bubble burst in 2008 due to such flawed and mistaken
judgements by company boards and shareholders, when they invested the
earnings/savings of innocent policyholders into Collateralised debt
obligations, or CDOs. India was saved from such a situation because of
the domination of the public sector in the banking and insurance
sectors. Even the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister have shared
this view.

Looking back, it is time to learn lessons from the global collapses of
banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions like Lehman
Brothers, etc. Foreign investment per se, does not bring any good with
it, especially in fragile sectors like insurance. This sector is the
pillar of any upcoming and growing economy.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Ecuador's Correa breezes to 2nd re-election

Quito, Feb 18 A landslide second re-election secured, President
Rafael Correa immediately vowed to deepen the "citizen's revolution"
that has lifted tens of thousands of Ecuadoreans out of poverty as he
expanded the welfarestate."In this revolution the citizens are
in charge, not capital," the leftist US-trained economist said after
winning 56.9 per cent of the vote yesterday against 23.8 per cent for
his closest challenger, longtime banker Guillermo Lasso.With 57 per
cent of the vote counted, former President Lucio Gutierrez finished
third with 6 per cent. The remainder was divided among five other
candidates. Lasso conceded defeat late yesterday.The fiery-tongued
Correa has brought surprising stability to an oil-exporting nation of
14.6 million with a history of unruliness that cycled through seven
presidents in the decade before him.With the help of oil prices that
have hovered around USD 100 a barrel, he has raised lower-class living
standards and widened the welfare state with region-leading social
spending.The 48-year-old Correa dedicated his victory to his cancer-stricken friend President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who some analysts have suggested he could succeed as the standard-bearer of Latin America's left."We are only here to serve you. Nothing for us.Everything
for you," Correa told cheering supporters from the balcony of the
Carondelet presidential palace yesterday shortly after polls closed.Yet
Correa has also drawn wide rebuke for intolerance of dissent and some
analysts have questioned how sustainable his economic policies are. The
number of people working for the government has burgeoned from 16,000 to
90,000 during Correa's current term if office, Ecuador's
nongovernmental Observatory of Fiscal Policy reported in December.Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank,
called Correa's ramping up of social spending "simply applying the
standard recipe for many populist governments in the region." While it
succeeds in buildingpolitical support in the short term, he said, it is not clear whether it is sustainable.And
while Correa has shown himself to be the "undisputed rhetorical leader
of Latin America's left" and should now see his standing enhanced there
Shifter said Correa's consolidation of power have damaged Ecuador's
"already precarious institutions" and he lacks the clout, the ambitionand the coffers to build a coalition that could curtailUS power in the region.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Reading the international press, one would be forgiven for thinking that Venezuela is on the verge of collapse.

Over the past decade, all
sorts of predictions have been made, ranging from catastrophic election
defeats to the implosion of the Venezuelan economy. But the fact these
predictions have failed to materialize has not deterred many of
Venezuela's most fervent critics in their quest to engineer a constant
and misleading narrative of impending disaster.

The reality is that ever
since President Hugo Chavez was first elected, Venezuela has defied
these negative predictions and brought unprecedented social progress to
the country over the last 14 years. Since 2004 poverty has been reduced
by half and extreme poverty has been cut by 70%.
University enrolment has doubled, entitlement to public pensions has
tripled, and access to health care and all levels of education have been
dramatically expanded.

Venezuela now has the lowest levels of economic inequality
of any Latin American country as measured by the Gini coefficient. Our
country has already achieved many of the Millennium Development Goals,
and is well on target to achieve all eight by the 2015 deadline.

This progress has been
achieved by using Venezuela's vast oil revenues to transform the lives
of ordinary people. The sheer scale of our oil reserves -- the world's largest
-- guarantees the complete sustainability of the model in which the
country's resources are used to stimulate growth in the economy and aid
development.

But Chavez's most
significant achievement has been to trigger the awakening and
empowerment of the majority. A majority of Venezuelans have seen vast
improvements in their living standards and, as a consequence, they have
continued to defend their interests at the ballot box.

The Venezuelan people are very clear about what they want. President Chavez was re-elected
in October 2012 with 54% of the vote in an election that boasted an 81%
turnout. The Venezuelan people showed their support for the government
again in December 2012 in the gubernatorial elections, which saw
Chavez's political party win 20 out of 23 states.

Governments in Europe and
other parts of the world could only dream of these levels of support
after 14 years in power. This shows that social progress in Venezuela
has been consolidated and that there is a desire to further expand this
progress.

In the coming years, the
Venezuelan government will continue to respond to the needs of the
Venezuelan people. Hundreds of thousands of new homes have been built
over the last two years which have not only greatly improved living
standards but also provided jobs and contributed to a boom in the
construction industry. The government is well on its way to meeting its
target of building three million new homes by 2019.

While many economies around the world are shrinking, the Venezuelan economy grew by 5.5%
in 2012. Against the backdrop of a continuing international financial
crisis, commerce in Venezuela grew by 9.2% and communications by 7.2%,
manufacturing grew by 2.1% and the oil sector grew by 1.4% -- making
Venezuela one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America.

At a time when many
countries are attacking the rights of the most vulnerable sectors of
society, Venezuela is providing ever greater protection for low-income
senior citizens and single-parent families with younger children or
disabled dependents.

The failed development
models of previous governments condemned millions of Venezuelans to
poverty. Before the election of Chavez in 1998, Venezuela suffered years
of falling GDP. The country had one of the worst economic records in
the world -- a record that led to mass social unrest and violent
military crackdowns.

Venezuela will continue
on its path of social progress and empowering ordinary citizens. The
greatest hope for the future is the people know that they alone hold the
power to determine the direction the country will take.

After so many failed predictions, isn't it time to respect Venezuela's democracy and the will of the people?

Sunday, February 10, 2013

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Food, which examined the draft
food security bill, has recommended one more version in terms of the
coverage and support that the Act should guarantee. It has reportedly
argued for mandatory coverage of 67 per cent of the population based on
multiple criteria that would separate the population into groups either
“included” or “excluded”. However, it has scaled down the monthly
entitlement of subsidised grain to a uniform 5 kg per month for every
person covered under the act. Assuming five persons per household that
amounts to an entitlement of 25 kg per household per month. In the view
of the committee, identified beneficiaries should be provided the
stipulated quantity at Rs. 3, 2 and 1 per kg respectively for rice wheat
and millets.

There is no unanimity here. One member of the committee, T.N. Seema,
submitted a note of dissent objecting to, among other recommendations,
the reduced entitlement and the cap on coverage. This is not surprising
since the Left in and outside Parliament, civil society groups like the
Right to Food Campaign and many analysts and academics have been arguing
for universal coverage on the grounds that targeting would in many ways
defeat the purpose of the bill. The recommendations of the Standing
Committee not only fall short of this but put out a scheme which is one
among the many involving less-than-universal coverage.

The government’s draft bill, for example, seeks to cover 63.5 per cent
of the population, consisting of 75 per cent of the population in rural
India and 60 per cent in urban India. These proportions have been broken
down into “priority” and “general” groups with the former eligible for 7
kg of subsidized grain at the low prices mentioned above, whereas the
general category will be eligible for 3 kg each at half the economic
cost of grain distributed through the public distribution system. The
National Advisory Council (NAC), on the other hand, had made a case for
providing food grains using the Rs. 3-2-1 pricing formula to 75 per cent
of the population (90 per cent in rural areas and 50 per cent in urban
areas) divided into “priority” (46% rural; 28% urban) and “general” (39%
rural; 12% urban) categories. Priority households were to be entitled
to 35 kg of subsidized food grain per month and general households to 20
kg, at a price not exceeding 50 per cent of the minimum support price
(MSP).

Finally, the Expert Committee set up by the Prime Minister and chaired
by C. Rangarajan, which took on the task of pruning the NAC’s
recommendations, elected for a substantial reduction in the population
that is to be guaranteed access. It favoured a scheme that would
“restrict the assured delivery of foodgrains at Rs 2 per kg for wheat
and Rs 3 per kg for rice, to the really needy households and cover the
rest through an executive order with a varying quantum depending on the
availability of foodgrains.” This would in effect give the government
the option of dropping those not “really needy” from the scheme. The
“really needy” households were defined as the set of those falling in
income terms below the revised official Tendulkar poverty line plus an
additional 10 per cent above that line. This was a clumsy concession to
keeping coverage equal to at least the “priority” section identified by
the NAC.

Given this potpourri in terms of schemes defined by coverage, quantum of
access and price, the debate is being shifted from one between those
demanding universal coverage and those wanting to restrict the right to
food to the so-called needy, to one about how much of India’s current
population should be seen as needy. However, there can be no agreement
on what being “needy” means, as the scorn widely poured on the
government’s earlier poverty line made clear. And having a
multi-dimensional perspective on deprivation, while appropriate, creates
significant difficulties in identifying beneficiaries leading to errors
of exclusion.

The real reason why such targeting is still favoured by sections in
government is that they see it as a way of reducing the cost of the
programme. This effort to reduce cost has been backed by arguments to
suggest that a food security programme with universal or even extensive
coverage would either be infeasible because of inadequate food supplies
or would be impossible to sustain because of the burden it would place
on the government’s budget.

In the elaboration of the first of these arguments the emphasis is on
the inadequacy of the domestically available surplus of foodgrains and
the fact that if India places a significant demand in global markets to
support its food security programme it would result in a spike in prices
that would be damaging for all. That such arguments, advanced by both
the Rangarajan Committee and the Parliamentary Standing Committee, could
even be made is shocking. It amounts to stating that production in
India is not in current circumstances and can never be adequate to
support an effort to ensure minimum access to food at affordable prices
for that segment of the population that would choose to avail of grains
supplied through the PDS. Besides the fact that this judgement is based
on questionable assumptions on availability and offtake, it also ignores
the fact that India’s current plight is the result of long years of
neglect of agriculture and food grain production
that has resulted in a long-term decline in the per capita availability
of food grain in the country. This neglect is now being made the reason
to prune the food security programme by a government that celebrates
the high growth rates of recent years and makes tall claims about
India’s current position in the global order.

The other argument, which has been the focus of the case against an
extensive or universal food security programme, is that the cost
involved is too high for a government already burdened by a high fiscal
deficit. It may be useful to reiterate once more that a fiscal deficit
can also be pruned by mobilising more resources through increased
taxation, reduced tax concessions and better implementation. The
controversy surrounding the capital gains demand made on Vodafone makes
clear that this government is committed more to incentivising investors,
including foreign investors, than to mobilising resources to finance
crucial expenditures.

To conceal the failure to mobilise required resources official
discussions on the food security programme quote absolute numbers of the
subsidies entailed in even the current programme and the way they have
risen over time in nominal or current price terms. This, to start with,
exaggerates the real increase in food provided. Thus while the central
food subsidy bill rose in nominal terms from Rs.23,280 crore to Rs.
60,573 crore between 2004-05 and 2011-12, the figure in 2011-12 after
adjusting for inflation in the wholesale prices of food articles between
those dates was Rs. 30,239 crore. One reason why food prices rise is
the adjustment that the government has to make to the Minimum Support
Price for food grains to compensate for cost of production increase. To
use that to declare food subsidy as the burden is clearly disingenuous.

But without making this clear nominal figures are quoted and taken as
being irrefutably indicative of how burdensome it is. The Rangarajan
Committee estimated that the subsidy required to support the NAC’s
scheme could go up to Rs. 92,000 crore and the Parliamentary Standing
Committee estimates the subsidy required to support its recommendations
at Rs. 1.12 crore. These figures are controversial and involve strong
assumptions.

Further, besides the inflation factor, there is another reason why
absolute figures convey little. Take for example the numbers reported in
Chart 1 giving the ratio of actual food subsidies over the last decade
relative to GDP. In most years subsidies have amounted to between 0.6
and 0.8 per cent of GDP, and touched 1 per cent in only a single year.
Raising this figure to more than one per cent is a reasonable demand
given the fact that the World Food Programme estimates that, despite
high growth over two decades and more, a quarter of the world’s hungry
population resides in India and around 43 per cent of children under the
age of five years are malnourished.

Moreover, Chart 2 shows that during the 2000s, when corporate profits
were soaring, tax concessions in different forms provided to the
corporate sector amounted to well above one per cent of GDP. Thus the
sum estimated by the Parliamentary Standing Committee as needed to
support its recommendation was at 1.35 per cent of GDP in 2011-12, less
than the 1.36 per cent of GDP transferred to the corporate sector
through these concessions in 2007-08. And corporate tax rebates are only
one form in which the corporate sector is favoured, as the
controversies over spectrum sale, coal blocks and even gas pricing
suggest. Anyone with a sense of social priorities should, in the
circumstances, recognise that the argument that the money is not
available is without much basis. What is lacking is the will to mobilise
the surplus and allocate it to where it is needed most.

Dhaka, 10 February: The spirited demonstrators in
their thousands gathered at Shahbagh intersection for the sixth straight
day today (Sunday) to stage sit-in demanding execution of Jamaat leader
Abdul Quader Mollah and all other war criminals.As
in the last five days, people from all walks of life, mainly students,
started gathering at the intersection, now known as Prajanma Chattar,
since morning shouting various slogans in support of their demand and
against anti-liberation forces.
Today’s programme started with a slogan demanding return to the 1972 constitution.
Vehicular movement which remained halted since Tuesday resumed on the
left side of Birdem Hospital from Bangla Motor to Press Club at 9 am.
But the traffic may be halted again with the growing of the crowd.
The cricketers of the national team are likely to express their solidarity with the demonstrators today.
Meanwhile, Duronto Rajshahi, a team of Bangladesh Premier League
(BPL), expressed solidarity with the demonstrators. “We’re lucky that
Pakistani cricketers are not there in BPL. In the future, Duronto
Rajshahi won’t hire Pakistani cricketers either,” Duronto Rajshahi its
Chairman Mushfiqur Rahman Mohan, said
On Tuesday, International Crimes Tribunal-2 (ICT-2) sentenced Abdul
Quader Mollah, assistant general secretary of Bangladesh
Jamaat-e-Islami, to life term imprisonment for his war crimes against
humanity during the Liberation War in 1971, triggering widespread
protests.
The mass uproar at Shahbagh erupted just hours after the verdict when
an online activists’ group, Blogger and Online Activists Network
(BOAN), gave a call through online social networks to wage protests
against the verdict. (UNB)

Saturday, February 2, 2013

US: Injustices Filling the Prisons

(Washington, DC) – The enormous prison population in the United States partly reflects harsh sentencing practices contrary to international law, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2013.
The sentencing practices include disproportionately long prison terms,
mandatory sentencing without parole, and treating youth offenders as
adults. The US maintains the world’s largest incarcerated population, at
1.6 million, and its highest per capita incarceration rate.
Human Rights Watch research in 2012 found that the massive
overincarceration includes a growing number of elderly people whom
prisons are ill-equipped to handle, and an estimated 93,000 youth under
age 18 in adult jails and another 2,200 in adult prisons. Hundreds of
children are subjected to solitary confinement. Racial and ethnic
minorities remain disproportionately represented in the prison
population.
"The United States has shown little interest in tackling abusive
practices that have contributed to the country’s huge prison
population,” said Maria McFarland,
deputy US program director at Human Rights Watch. "Unfortunately, it is
society’s most vulnerable – racial and ethnic minorities, low-income
people, immigrants, children, and the elderly – who are most likely to
suffer from injustices in the criminal justice system."

In its 665-page report, Human Rights Watch assessed progress on human
rights during the past year in more than 90 countries, including an
analysis of the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The willingness of new
governments to respect rights will determine whether the Arab Spring
gives birth to genuine democracy or simply spawns authoritarianism in
new clothes, Human Rights Watch said.
The World Report chapter on the United States covers human rights
developments related to US criminal justice and immigration, as well as
issues related to health, labor, and the rights of women, children,
people with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
people. It also addresses abuses related to the United States’ deeply
flawed counterterrorism policies.
Human rights developments within the United States over the past year include:

• Connecticut joined 16 other states and the
District of Columbia in abolishing the death penalty. However, 33 states
continue to allow it;

• In May, the US Department of Justice issued
final standards under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) to detect,
prevent, and punish prison rape. The standards are immediately binding
on all Justice Department facilities;

• In fiscal year 2012, US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) deported a record 396,906 non-citizens. A dramatic
increase in federal prosecutions of immigration violations, and in the
number of immigrants in detention, has fed a nationwide detention system
that includes more than 250 facilities;

• Illegal re-entry into the US has become the most
prosecuted federal crime. In 2011, prosecutions for illegal entry and
re-entry into the US surpassed 34,000 and 37,000 respectively. Many of
those prosecuted for these crimes have minor or no criminal history and
have substantial ties to the US;

• The US Senate, in December, failed to ratify the
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Sixty-one of the
100 Senators voted in favor, but 66 votes were needed for passage.
Several senators have promised to make another attempt to ratify the
treaty in early 2013;

• In April, the Labor Department withdrew new
regulations proposed in 2011 that would have updated, for the first time
in decades, the list of hazardous agricultural tasks prohibited for
children under age 16;

• Congress failed to renew the Violence Against
Women Act (VAWA), the primary federal law providing legal protection and
services to victims of domestic and sexual violence. Sexual assaults
remained underreported and poorly investigated in many jurisdictions.
Certain groups, such as unauthorized migrant farmworkers, face
particular challenges to seeking justice;

• In June, the US Supreme Court upheld the
Affordable Care Act, which significantly expands many citizens’ access
to health insurance and medical care;

• HIV infections continued to disproportionately
affect minority communities, men who have sex with men, and transgender
women. Many states have failed to protect HIV-positive people from
discrimination or to provide adequate funds for HIV prevention and care;
and

• For the first time anywhere, popular votes in
two states and the District of Columbia legalized same-sex marriage.
However, federal law continued to bar recognition of same-sex marriage
while offering no protection against discrimination based on sexual
orientation or gender identity.

Both the Obama administration and Congress supported abusive
counterterrorism laws and policies, including detention without charge
at Guantanamo Bay, restrictions on the transfer of detainees held there,
and prosecutions in a fundamentally flawed military commission system.
Attacks by US aerial drones were carried out in Pakistan, Somalia,
Yemen, and elsewhere, with important legal questions about the attacks
remaining unanswered.
The administration has taken no steps toward accountability for
torture and other abuses committed by US officials in the so-called “war
on terror,” and a Justice Department criminal investigation into
detainee abuse concluded without recommending any charges. The Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence completed a more than 6,000-page report
detailing the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program,
but has yet to seek the report’s declassification so it can be released
to the public.
“The Obama administration has a chance in its second term to develop
with Congress a real plan for closing Guantanamo and definitively ending
abusive counterterrorism practices,” McFarland said. “A failure to do
so puts Obama at risk of going down in history as the president who made
indefinite detention without trial a permanent part of US law.”

India rated poorly against protection of women

India has been accused of “failure” to curb incidents of sexual violence
against women and for “restrictions” on right to free speech by global
rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said the country continues
to have “significant human rights problems.”

“India has a thriving civil society, free media, and an independent
judiciary”, the city-based rights group said in its assessment of rights
abuses in India. However, it added “longstanding abusive practices,
corruption, and lack of accountability for perpetrators foster human
rights violations.”

Discrimination

In its 665-page World Report 2013,
it said government initiatives, including police reform and improved
access to health care and education, “languish” due to poor
implementation. “Many women, children, Dalits, tribal communities,
religious minorities, people with disabilities, and sexual and gender
minorities remain marginalised and continue to suffer discrimination
because of government failure to train public officials in stopping
discriminatory behaviour,” HRW said.

The rights group was critical of India for the way it has addressed the
problem of violence against women, saying that incidents of violence
against women and girls continued in 2012, with increased reports of
sexual assault, including against those with disabilities.

“India has yet to enact amendments to reform its penal laws to recognise a wide range of sexual offences,” it said.

While the Central government modified its protocols for handling rape
investigations, removing questions on the degrading “two-finger test”,
the changes still fall short of World Health Organization guidelines on
sexual assault, especially regarding medical treatment for victims.

On India’s performance in the area of freedom of expression, HRW said
the government used laws to tighten internet censorship, raising
concerns about restrictions on the right to free speech.